I was in one of those large electronics stores the other day, looking at speakers and pretending that the differing volts and specs will help me determine which ones I want.
I was there returning a keyboard I borrowed for a month with the intent of taking advantage of their 30-day return policy. I highly recommend this method, primarily because it helps smaller, independent stores that are going obsolete because of places like this. I do my part by wasting their their time and money, and a nice little by-product is that I get a free rental of something for a month.
So this woman came up to me with a flyer in her hand, telling me that the price of toilet paper in the flyer is different than the price on the shelf. I didn’t really understand why she was telling me, so I just said, “Maybe [the store is screwing with people to get them to come in]”, thinking that could be true.
She thought I was being rude, because – as I started to realize – she was under the impression that I worked there. I thought she was just having a chat with me, as a fellow human who might have also been subjected to corporate trickery today.
She said she wanted to speak to my manager. I thought it might be funny to go up to the manager of this store with this hysterical woman who might be trying to get me fired, so we walked over to the manager. The woman pleaded her case, and then this manager turns to me and goes, “You’re fired!” At this point I thought I’d come clean, so I told him, I was just like “Well I don’t actually work here”. Then he said, “Hey, me neither!”
Now this angry woman is just standing there, trying to get the fake manager of a store to fire one of his fake employees. Me and this other non-employee guy had a little laugh about it and just went on with our lives. But this woman was so frustrated and pissed off at this point that as I’m walking away, I could hear her yelling, “Where’s the manager?? I need to speak with the manager!!”
I left, but her conversation with the actual manager was probably stupid too.